Friday 2nd September 2022, 3.40pm (day 4,026)
An abstract, but appropriate metaphor for life today. The signature on the glass says John Smith but the product is different. And, no, it’s not all the same in the end.
World seen through beer
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Category Archives: Urban scene
Store closed (not an advert)
Thursday 1st September 2022, 10.40am (day 4,025)
Hey ho, it’s September already, so I suppose I’d better go into Manchester, for the first time in four weeks. I guess the health of the city centre retail has held up there better than some other places I’ve been lately, but the huge Debenhams department store on Market Street hasn’t made it, the shutters closed and graffitied, the windows gathering dust.
Warrington Bank Quay station
Monday 29th August 2022, 5.25pm (day 4,022)
I’ve been to more than a few railway stations in my time, and whether in the UK or elsewhere, few are as gloriously industrial as Warrington Bank Quay. Yet on the other side of the tracks — the Town Hall, parks, leafy streets.
Sunday evening
Sunday 28th August 2022, 7.30pm (day 4,021)
A holiday weekend — no work tomorrow! (Unless of course you work in one of the many professions in which this idea of a mandated holiday is just a pipe dream.) But it was an excuse to go out and enjoy company and dress in silly yellow hats, if that’s your bag.
Evening in Wageningen
Tuesday 23rd August 2022, 7.10pm (day 4,016)
This scene is very Dutch, even without sight of any canals, windmills, cheese, cannabis retailers and so on — all of which Wageningen has, I can assure you. There are plenty of bikes visible here however. Conversations in the pub this evening suggest that the Nethlerlands faces just the same problems that are familiar at home right now, such as rising energy bills, neoliberalist shite in power, etc., and I sympathise, belive me. But all the same it seems just such a civilised place, compared to almost anywhere else I can think of.
Rippleside cemetery
Saturday 20th August 2022, 12.50pm (day 4,013)
Barking is one of the least gentrified bits of London, not that that is a bad thing. It also gives extremely good graveyard, as I discovered when getting away from the traffic noise and finding myself in the huge necropolis that is Rippleside cemetery, seeming to stretch away for miles, a vast city of memorials to those who have ‘passed on’ and ‘fallen asleep’. Or, here with the three members of the Sanderson family, taken out by (I assume) German bombers one night in January 1941.
Watching the beer come in
Thursday 18th August 2022, 4.40pm (day 4,011)
A day at home, between trips away, and watching the beer get delivered to the pub (from across the road, for some reason) was the day’s chief entertainment. Diamond the dog becomes the latest animal to make theblog twice, adopting much the same position as on her first appearance.
In the fountain
Friday 12th August 2022, 4.45pm (day 4,005)
The media would like us to think that all is heading for some kind of climate-related disaster, but personally I’m quite enjoying the decent weather this summer, which seems to have extended out to Northern Ireland, at least this week. And she is having a good time in it too.
Guildhall and Peace Bridge, Derry
Wednesday 10th August 2022, 7.50pm (day 4,003)
Hey, I’m on holiday. Still in my own country — just about. But Derry, Northern Ireland, is the westernmost city in the UK and doesn’t really feel like the rest of the place for lots of different reasons. Of which more in tomorrow’s post. The Peace Bridge crosses the River Foyle, which is, essentially, the border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland — only not quite, at this point. It’s that uncertainty which defines this place, it seems to me.
